23 Jenkins P111 0874 - British Academy · Henry Jenkins was a deacon and church secretary (as...

HAROLD JENKINS

Copyright © The British Academy 2001 – all rights reserved

Harold Jenkins1909–2000

HAROLD JENKINS (Harold to his many friends, old and young) was bornat Shenley, Buckinghamshire, on 19 July 1909, the eldest son of the fivechildren of Henry and Mildred Jenkins (Ann, Harold, May, Wallace,Albert). Henry and Mildred were cousins. Henry, described as ‘Shenley’sown milk and egg retailer’, was depicted in Around Stony Stratford1 withhis horse and cart, ‘measuring milk out of his churn’. I have seen afamily-tree which traces some of Harold’s ancestors to the seventeenthcentury. His grandfather, George Jenkins (b. 1839) married Hannah Fossey,lace-maker, in 1864; their fifth child, Henry (1878–1932), was Harold’sfather.

The Jenkins family had lived in Shenley for generations. Henry andMildred started life together in a cottage, and later moved to a sub-stantial seventeenth-century house. A cousin who knew her welldescribes ‘Aunt Milly’ as ‘very charming, very lady-like, always smartlydressed’. Apparently she was a fine singer (contralto) and sang in thechurch choir. The family attended Loughton Baptist Church, whereHenry Jenkins was a deacon and church secretary (as secretary he some-times preached himself). Harold’s sister May was also elected to theDiaconate (at Spurgeon Baptist Church, Fenny Stratford) and serveduntil 1981, when she became a Life Deacon. Harold no doubt played apart in the family’s religious activities, for he met his future wife at a

Proceedings of the British Academy, 111, 553–72. © The British Academy 2001.

1 Audrey Lambert, Around Stony Stratford, A Second Selection, Britain in Old Photographs(Stroud, 1996), 90.


Baptist gathering at UCL (University College London). In later years,however, he no longer attended services.

Harold went to a local school at the precocious age of three, and fromthere, in 1920, won a free place in the Secondary School (later WolvertonGrammar School), nearly five miles away—walking or cycling each daywith his sisters, and helping in his father’s business in school vacations. Atschool he was keen on football, cricket and tennis, and, one assumes, onacademic studies as well. In 1926 he won a County Major Scholarship(£100 p.a. for three years), and in 1927 he added the Ewelme Scholarship,open to pupils from Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire (£40for three years).

Harold proceeded to UCL in 1927 to read English Language andLiterature (1927–30), graduating with First Class Honours; he also wonthe Morley Medal in English Literature and, a greater triumph, theGeorge Smith Studentship (1930–1), awarded annually to the outstand-ing candidate in English Language and Literature throughout the (federal)University of London. He wanted to continue with English studies. Hisfather, having other children to support, could not afford to go on sub-sidising him, and called on Professor R. W. Chambers to explain hispredicament. At this point the Quain Studentship fell vacant unexpect-edly and Chambers nominated Harold, which (at £150 p.a.) made pos-sible five years of graduate study at UCL with some teachingresponsibilities (1930–5). One of his closer friends at this time wasGeoffrey Tillotson, with whom he shared a very small room, ‘almost acupboard’ (Professor Kathleen Tillotson).

The first holder (from 1928) of the Lord Northcliffe chair of ModernEnglish Literature was C. J. Sisson (1885–1966) who, I later heard fromhis own lips, greatly admired Harold, and, I now know, backed him atimportant points in his career. In 1930 Harold embarked on an MA dis-sertation on the minor Elizabethan dramatist Henry Chettle: Sisson, theleading specialist in Elizabethan literature at UCL, no doubt nudged himin this direction, but not for selfish reasons. Sisson arranged that Haroldshould be supervised by W. W. Greg, President of the BibliographicalSociety and an honorary lecturer in Bibliography at UCL.

In 1997, introducing Harold’s three lectures on Shakespeare’s roman-tic comedies, I claimed that ‘his fearlessness is an essential part of hismental equipment’ and that ‘he was not even overawed, I believe, by thegreat Sir Walter Greg’.2 Not so, Harold wrote to me (23 August 1997).

554 E. A. J. Honigmann

2 The Shakespeare Newsletter, Extra Issue (1997).


‘The idea that I wasn’t overawed by Greg, though flattering, is comic.When Sisson brought into college the great man who had editedHenslowe’s Diary, it was almost like a royal visit. And when Sissonhanded me over to him for the supervision of my MA it was a veryformidable privilege.’

Harold graduated MA with distinction in 1933. Next year The Lifeand Work of Henry Chettle was published by Sidgwick & Jackson, ofwhich firm R. B. McKerrow happened to be a director. In his PrefaceHarold explained that his MA dissertation ‘has been thoroughly andextensively revised’, acknowledging his indebtedness to three mentors—Sisson, Greg, and McKerrow.

To understand Harold’s subsequent career we have to remember theextraordinary impact of the Bibliographical Society (founded 1892), andto a lesser extent of the Malone Society, in the first decades of thetwentieth century. Describing the early history of the BibliographicalSociety and its most active members, F. P. Wilson declared that ‘if oneman is to be chosen as the hero, then it is clear who that man is’3—yetwhile Greg was undoubtedly the hero (and his later publications only con-firmed his pre-eminence), Wilson also gave generous praise to others,notably McKerrow.

In the first decade of this century . . . Greg and McKerrow had establishedthemselves as upholders of a new standard of accuracy and knowledge in thebibliographical criticism of Elizabethan texts, Greg above all by his editions ofHenslowe’s Diary and of the Henslowe Papers and by the work which he wasdoing (from 1906) for the Malone Society, McKerrow above all by his editionof Nashe, but both of them and especially Greg by severe though just reviewsof any work that fell below the standards they had set themselves. (p. 78)

R. B. McKerrow (1872–1940) and W. W. Greg (1875–1959) hadknown each other at Harrow and became close friends at Cambridge.They, together with A. W. Pollard (1859–1944), were leading spirits in theBibliographical Society, and Greg was also general editor of the MaloneSociety (from 1906 to 1939). Sisson, a younger man, shared their interestsand at the same time pursued a passion of his own, the study of publicrecords. It was Harold’s great good fortune that he was taken up by theseoutstanding scholars, who no doubt recognised him as ‘one of us’. ToSisson Harold owed his enthusiasm for Elizabethan literature and hisintroduction to Greg (and, through Greg, to McKerrow), and he was

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3 F. P. Wilson, ‘Shakespeare and the New Bibliography’, The Bibliographical Society 1892–1942Studies in Retrospect (1949), 134.


further indebted to Sisson when he followed him, for his second book, tothe public records.

At the time when Harold embarked on his postgraduate career, howwere his three mentors occupied? Greg had just edited Records of theCourt of the Stationers’ Company 1576–1602 (1930) and was busy withEnglish Literary Autographs 1500–1650, published in four parts between1925 and 1932, and Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses(1931), not to mention innumerable articles and reviews and other workthat was later to bear fruit in A Bibliography of the English Printed Dramato the Restoration (4 vols., 1939–59) and The Shakespeare First Folio(1955). McKerrow was one of several friends who helped Greg withEnglish Literary Autographs, had published An Introduction to Bibliographyfor Literary Students (1927), became Sandars Reader in Bibliography atCambridge (1928), read a revolutionary paper on ‘The ElizabethanPrinter and Dramatic Manuscripts’ to the Bibliographical Society in 1931and issued Title-page Borders used in England & Scotland 1485–1640 in1932. Sisson’s years of toil in the archives led to Thomas Lodge and OtherElizabethans (1932), Lost Plays of Shakespeare’s Age (1936), and TheJudicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker (1940).

We may take it that Harold was deeply impressed by the work of histhree mentors and decided to follow in their footsteps (unfortunately forhim, in my opinion, since he had other gifts which were not brought intoplay for some years). They clearly encouraged him, for McKerrow andSisson each published two articles from his pen in the 1930s. McKerrowhad founded The Review of English Studies in 1925 and edited it until hisdeath in 1940, and Sisson became General Editor of The Modern LanguageReview (1933–55). Harold, therefore, enjoying privileged access to theleaders of his profession, had to work to the very highest standards tosatisfy them—and to satisfy himself.

His first book will have seemed to him a modest achievementcompared with the heroic labours of his three seniors. It is placed in a dif-ferent perspective, however, when one recalls that Harold was onlytwenty-five when it appeared. It reads like the work of a mature scholar:over and above his firm grasp of the problems of collaboration, dating,text, etc. he pronounced on the findings of men of established reputationwith incisive judgement, characteristic of him throughout his life.Because of the nature of Chettle’s surviving work, much of it written ingreat haste, Harold’s talent for literary criticism was not here seen to bestadvantage, but we may illustrate his other great strength, his ability tomarshal evidence, from an article that grew out of his book, ‘On the



Authenticity of Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit and The Repentance ofRobert Greene’.4 Greene’s two pamphlets were alleged to be spurious; theargument had continued from the 1590s to the 1930s, and Chettle wasthought to be implicated. Harold examined the evidence meticulously,and distinguished between different levels of proof. His own arguments

are not put forward as a proof of authenticity; but they do, I hope, suggest thatthere is no insuperable bar to the belief that these two pamphlets are the work ofRobert Greene, written during his last illness. I do not think that the last word onthe subject has been said; but the Groatsworth and the Repentance are not to beremoved from the canon of Greene—even to be placed in the category of doubt-ful works—until evidence of very much greater significance is forthcoming.

Harold’s awareness of other possibilities, and his sure-footedness inreaching his own conclusions, are already fully developed. As he foresaw,and I have special reason to know,5 the argument for spuriousness did notdie away.

After the Quain Studentship Harold moved for a year to the Universityof Liverpool as William Noble Fellow (1935–6) and then to the Universityof the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Junior Lecturer, 1936–8; Lecturer,1939–44; Senior Lecturer and second in command under Professor J. Y. T.Greig, 1945). In 1945 he returned to UCL (Lecturer, 1945–6; Reader,1946–54), invited back by Sisson, the Joint Head of Department, who hadhim promoted to the Upper Division of the Readership Grade in 1951.From 1954 to 1967 he served as Professor of English at Westfield College,University of London (a women’s college until 1964)—perhaps hishappiest years—and from 1967 to 1971 as Regius Professor of Rhetoricand English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.

The move to Edinburgh was a mistake. Long ago Harold told me howit came about. He had not applied for the chair, had no connections withEdinburgh. Quite unexpectedly he was invited to take the oldest chair ofEnglish Literature in the United Kingdom, was asked to meet theEdinburgh Principal at Heathrow between planes, they talked very briefly,and this ‘head hunting’ was of course flattering. Harold assumed that theRegius Professor would be the Head of Department and heard, too late,that another Head was already in place. He was unworldly enough toaccept before he knew what his salary would be, and in consequencewrote about this to the Principal (24 September 1966):

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4 Review of English Studies, 11 (1935), 28–41.5 See John Jowett, ‘Credulous to False Prints’ in Shakespearean Continuities, ed. John Batchelor,Tom Cain, and Claire Lamont (1997), 93–107.


I wasn’t quite so happy—I know one isn’t supposed to speak of such things andthis is only for your private ear—about his [the Secretary’s] dealing with thesalary, the single reference to which I thought very cavalier. What in thecircumstances you yourself think proper will be acceptable to me; but I don’tlike the idea of its being done in your absence. I think you will understand this.

Frictions within the department probably contributed to an undiagnosedulcer, from which he suffered for some time.6 He wrote to me (29 March1988) ‘I was never happy in the Edinburgh department, which had mademe think it wanted me but never wanted anything I wanted to do.’ Whathe chiefly wanted to do was to edit Hamlet. ‘I worked steadily on Hamletfor the best part of ten years’—that is, after retiring, not counting hisoccasional publications on the play in the 1950s and 1960s.

But let us go back to the 1930s. Soon after completing his work onChettle, Harold’s thoughts turned to Edward Benlowes, who was to bethe subject of his next major book. In ‘Towards a biography of EdwardBenlowes’7 he followed up an article by Carl Niemeyer (‘New Light onEdward Benlowes’),8 stating that he had ‘been engaged on some inde-pendent research on the life and career of this poet, [and so] I am ableto add several important details to the biographical information whichMr. Niemeyer has collected’. Next year he published ‘A Poet in Chancery:Edward Benlowes’.9 These preliminary studies fed into his D.Litt. thesisat Witwatersrand, ‘The Life and Times of Edward Benlowes, 1602–1676’(1945), and the thesis in its turn was revised and published as EdwardBenlowes (1602–76) Biography of a Minor Poet (The Athlone Press,London, and Harvard University Press, 1952). This book, not as wellknown as it ought to be, is surely a minor classic.

I have met colleagues who consider the Benlowes as an achievementequal to the edition of Hamlet, but there I cannot agree. The Benlowes isa beautifully paced narrative of a personal tragedy, the decline of a manwho inherited a fortune of more than £1,000 p.a. and died a pauper—afascinating story, much of it unearthed by Harold himself, but it did notpermit him to display his characteristic strengths. Harold’s wit, his bril-liance in argument and his ability to rise to the demands of great poetry,so evident in the Hamlet, are missing, for Benlowes, like Chettle, was a


6 Much earlier Gladys Jenkins had noted in her diary (16 Oct. 1943) that ‘H. had a good deal ofpain in his stomach . . . the doctor is afraid that there might be a gastric ulcer’, and the painreturned now and then.7 RES, 12 (1936), 273–84.8 RES, 12 (1936), 31–41.9 Modern Language Review, 32 (1937), 382–93.


minor writer, and a major critic cannot come into his own unless he findsa literary talent worthy of his attention. Chettle and Benlowes did notbring the best out of Harold: when he picked these authors (or were theypicked for him?) he was still dazzled by Sisson and Greg, and perhaps didnot see that his own genius demanded a greater challenge.

Nevertheless the Benlowes was much admired and certainly countedas Harold’s most prestigious publication when he was appointed to thechairs at London and Edinburgh. Joan Bennett summed up the generalreaction. ‘No one will ever need to write Benlowes’s biography again,but many students of the seventeenth century will turn to Mr Jenkins’sbook.’10 Christopher Hill regarded the Benlowes as ‘a model biographyof its kind . . . The poet can be related to his social and economicbackground with an assurance that is rare in seventeenth-century bio-graphy’.11 Indeed Harold’s scholarly skills in this book were exception-ally wide-ranging: discoveries in the public records; complete masteryof obscure religious and political implications and events, and of no lessobscure poets and their literary connections; bibliographical analysisof Benlowes’s chef d’oeuvre, Theophila (1652), with its revisions andpen-and-ink corrections. ‘Of the nineteen copies which I have myselfexamined,’ Harold observed, ‘ten have authoritative corrections in penand ink’ (p. 315). If he had not said so one would never have guessedthat ‘large parts of it were originally written in South Africa, and onlythose who have tried it will appreciate the difficulties of working at adistance from one’s primary sources and a well-equipped specialistlibrary’ (p. vii).

Absorbed as he was by the Benlowes, Harold found time to edit TheTragedy of Hoffman By Henry Chettle for the Malone Society Reprints1950 (1951), ‘prepared by Harold Jenkins and checked by CharlesSisson’ (all MSR texts are checked by at least one other scholar). Healso carried a full teaching load, and soon became known as an out-standing lecturer. In London he gave courses on Elizabethan andJacobean Drama, Shakespeare, Metaphysical Poetry, RestorationDrama, Eighteenth Century Literature, the Romantics, Victorian Liter-ature, and many other subjects. His students were devoted to him, bothas lecturer and as tutor. It was the experience of teaching that will havehelped to draw him away from ‘scholarship’ to ‘criticism’—to such

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10 MLR, 48 (1953), 336–8.11 ‘Benlowes and His Times’, Essays in Criticism, 3 (1953), 143–51. See also The Collected Essaysof Christopher Hill, Volume One (Amherst, 1985).


acknowledged classics as his lectures on As You Like It and Twelfth Nightand Much Ado About Nothing.12

But of course his scholarly studies continued, and special mentionmust be made of one in particular, ‘Readings in the Manuscript of “SirThomas More”’.13 When Greg’s MSR of The Book of Sir Thomas More(1911) was reissued in 1961 and, because of the precarious state of themanuscript, scholars were not permitted to examine the original, Haroldwas asked to prepare a ‘Supplement to the Introduction’, having checkedthrough the manuscript not long before. He now corrected Greg’stranscription and notes some four dozen times. Years later he wrote to me(23 August 1997) ‘Of course I occasionally disagreed with [Greg], but onewould not dare risk printed disagreement (or indeed with people likeMcKerrow, Kittredge, Bowers) unless one was pretty sure of one’sground.’ Harold also surveyed recent discussions of the play and madeseveral penetrating suggestions. He thought that J. M. Nosworthy’sanalysis of Addition III made ‘a very formidable case’ for attributing this(as well as Addition IV) to Shakespeare, and was able to strengthen it.

More, awed by his unnatural elevation, sees implied in it the reversal of the nat-ural roles of father and son, and his sense of the parent’s unnatural homagefinds expression in an image of kneeling (III. 10). That such an association isdeeply rooted in Shakespeare’s imagination is amply shown elsewhere. He hasno scenes more moving, for their combination of human feeling and symbolicforce, than those in Lear and Coriolanus which show the unnatural act of theparent kneeling to the child.

By the 1950s Harold, now in his forties, was ready to bring together‘scholarship’ and ‘criticism’ in the ultimate test, an edition of Hamlet.Harold F. Brooks, one of the general editors of the Arden Shakespeare,once told me that, when the editors for individual plays were selected,he announced ‘there is only one man in the world who is fit to take onHamlet: Harold Jenkins’. A contract was signed in 1954, and the editionappeared twenty-eight years later, in 1982. In between these dates, in1958, Harold replaced Una Ellis-Fermor and joined Harold Brooks asgeneral editor of the Arden Shakespeare, and ‘the two Harolds’ reignedfor many years (they were joined later by a third general editor, BrianMorris). Harold’s painstaking and unselfish work on other Arden vol-umes undoubtedly held back his own Hamlet, the crowning achievement


12 The first two were reprinted, and the third printed for the first time, in Three Classic Essaysby Harold Jenkins (The Shakespeare Newsletter, Extra Issue, 3 (1997)).13 MLR, 43 (1948), 512–14.


of his career—so much so that he began to worry that he would not liveto complete it.

Yet it must not be supposed that in his ‘Hamlet years’ (1954–82)Harold could devote himself exclusively to Hamlet. Until he retired, in1971, he was very busy with teaching and committee work, with visits tomany universities; he was a popular invited speaker at conferences, he wasactive as a reviewer and assessor. At Edinburgh, among other duties, hehad to judge submissions for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize forfiction. His inaugural lectures at Westfield and Edinburgh, The StructuralProblem in Shakespeare’s ‘Henry the Fourth’ (1956) and The Catastrophein Shakespearean Tragedy (1969), two of his finest performances, givesome idea of the quality of mind that he brought to every task. WhenC. J. Sisson published Shakespeare’s Complete Works (c.1954), Haroldcontributed a brilliantly compressed ‘biographical essay’ and a text of theplay Sir Thomas More, ‘here for the first time printed in full in an editionof [Shakespeare’s] writings’.

When he undertook Hamlet, Harold must have realised that hisedition would be compared with Dover Wilson’s (1934) in the New(Cambridge) Shakespeare. He would also have known that Dover Wilsonhad published two other hugely influential books on Hamlet.14 He couldnot have foreseen that he himself would be invited to succeed John Butt,Dover Wilson’s successor in the Regius chair at Edinburgh, and that hehimself would one day write the Memoir for Dover Wilson published inthe Proceedings of this Academy (1973). Yet as the years passed Haroldwill have grown aware that not only was Hamlet ‘the centre-piece of allhis [Dover Wilson’s] work’, it was no less the centre-piece of his own.

Before we consider the two editions of Hamlet let us compare the twoeditors. Although they both belonged to families ‘with a long farminghistory in Buckinghamshire’, occupied the same Regius chair anddevoted the best years of their lives to the same play, no two men couldhave been more unlike. This becomes very clear in Harold’s Memoir ofDover Wilson. As an editor and critic, Dover Wilson loved to live danger-ously. Thus when he took full control of the New Shakespeare he lost‘none of the spirit of adventurousness, the willingness to take risks whichhad characterized his work from the beginning’. Quiller-Couch had‘repeatedly warned him against too many “discoveries” ’; his ‘daring inhypothesis was such that [A. W. Pollard] . . . often had to urge restraint’.

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14 The Manuscript of Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and the problems of its transmission (2 vols.,Cambridge, 1934); What Happens in ‘Hamlet’ (Cambridge, 1935).


Yet, Harold added, ‘he never sought to disguise that his conclusions were“provisional”, and the more conservative scholars who were justlysceptical of some of them did not dispute the value of his method’. Inscholarly matters (though not in politics) Harold was definitely ‘moreconservative’—more cautious and, once he had come to a decision, lesswilling to change his mind. Temperamentally he and Dover Wilson werefar apart: Harold impressed those who did not know him as reserved,whereas Dover Wilson, in public and in private, was always at his ease, hiseyes sparkling with mischievous humour. Harold’s caution and DoverWilson’s endearing enthusiasm were also reflected in their scholarly out-put: Dover Wilson poured forth a never-ending stream of books andarticles, Harold produced only four books, and many of his articles werespin-offs of those books.

Harold’s relationship with Dover Wilson was a complicated one. As heacknowledged at the end of his Memoir, Dover Wilson had treated himwith great kindness on several occasions before he moved to Edinburghin 1967, and then ‘the Dover Wilsons were the first to ask us to dinner’.He paid tribute to Dover Wilson’s magnanimity and zest, and much laterwrote a letter to the Times Literary Supplement (27 May 1988) protestingagainst Marshall McLuhan’s ‘shameful description’ of Dover Wilson as‘soullessly bookish’: on the contrary, said Harold, he was one ‘whosegeniality of manner, vivacity of mind and warmth of humanity inspiredaffection in all who knew him’. Kenneth Muir wrote to Harold ‘I’m gladyou wrote in defence of Dover Wilson—he was a generous and splendidperson.’ Yet Harold did not want to ‘do the Memoir’. He wrote to me(29 March 1988) that after he retired from Edinburgh

the mental euphoria of such unwonted freedom was glorious. But of coursethere were ties of work—all the things I had contracted to do & never done.These included the Brit. Acad. obituary of Dover Wilson, which I never wantedto do but couldn’t get out of when Peter Alexander bequeathed it to me. AndGladys [Harold’s wife] afterwards confessed that it was the one thing that reallyworried her because she thought I never was going to get it done. Apparentlyshe never had qualms, as I did, about my finishing Hamlet.

I suspect that he never ‘wanted to do’ the Memoir partly because healready knew that he would have to disagree so often with Dover Wilsonin his own Hamlet.

Let us return to Hamlet. For sixteen years Dover Wilson had waged a‘campaign . . . with simultaneous attacks upon the textual and dramaticproblems’, brought to fruition in the three books of 1934 and 1935. Inaddition he had produced the play as a young lecturer at Goldsmiths’



College, and he had had a trial run as editor in his Cranach Press Hamlet(1930), based, like his later edition, on the Second Quarto. What, then,could Harold offer in competition with Dover Wilson?

In a word, he could offer judgement—a wonderful grasp of the com-plexities of conflicting evidence and a very rare talent for untangling it.When he signed his contract in 1954 he must have known that while hewould follow Dover Wilson’s lead in some important departments—notably in basing his text on the Second Quarto—he would also have theopportunity of presenting a very different Hamlet. The decision tomeasure himself against Dover Wilson, to challenge a colleague andfriend of Pollard, McKerrow, and Greg, the giants of Harold’s youth,must have been pondered with some trepidation.

In what was probably the most searching and authoritative review ofHarold’s Hamlet, Fredson Bowers mentioned ‘his rather sharp tongue inparts of the commentary’.15 We may guess that Bowers had in mindpassages such as ‘Warburton’s famous emendation god [II. ii. 182] . . . stilloccasionally resuscitated by otherwise reputable editors, and misleadinglymaintained by Bowers . . . is as unnecessary as it is unjustified’ (pp. 466–7).In fact Bowers got off more lightly than many. One man’s ‘evidence, whennot illusory, is featherweight’ (p. 51), another was guilty of ‘extraordinaryfantastications’ (p. 520), another of an ‘unexpectedly perverse and obfus-cating article’ (p. 536). Having known Harold for almost fifty years, andregarding his contempt for poor scholarship and muddled thinking as anessential part of the man, I nevertheless wonder at these side-swipes,entertaining though they may be. And of course Dover Wilson was anirresistible target. One Dover Wilson ‘fancy’ is ‘obviously unacceptable’(p. 270), another is ‘quite beside the point’ (p. 324); ‘it is impossible toagree with Dover Wilson’ (p. 388); ‘Dover Wilson attempted a differentsolution . . . I think we must pronounce it indubitably wrong’ (p. 566)—and much more in the same vein. Harold seems to have realised that hewent too far, and apologised in the Preface. ‘If I have seemed sometimesto show less than respect, I am glad to right that here. I take no pleasurein disagreement with the illustrious dead, especially when this coexists, asin the case of Dover Wilson and McKerrow, with the memory of theirpersonal kindness to me.’

Harold wrote to me (28 Jan. 1994) ‘I haven’t the spirit or combative-ness for that sort of controversy these days.’ The combativeness is verymuch in evidence in his Hamlet (far more so than in the Chettle or the

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15 The Library, Sixth Series, 5 (1983), 282–96.


Benlowes), and it will jar some readers. If it does, we must remember thatit is intimately connected with more precious gifts, Harold’s flair for get-ting at the truth and the high value he attached to it. I have not countedthem, but there must be hundreds of Commentary notes that add toknowledge. As for Harold’s text, a comparison of the first pages of theNew Shakespeare and Arden editions, especially of their stage directionsand punctuation, shows that Harold went his own way. And there aremany readings in the text that one now identifies with Harold, eventhough in some cases he built on other men’s conjectures—‘Thus diestthou’ (IV. vii. 56), ‘Let her come in’ (IV. v. 152). ‘In both these cases Fmakes a facile “correction” while evidently misconceiving the dramatist’sintent. That distinguished scholars through a faith in F should persist indefending manifest error is occasion for despair.’16

It will be clear by now that Harold rarely followed the conventionalroute, and this is very evident in his Hamlet. While his edition appears toconform to the guidelines of the Arden Shakespeare, it breaks away fromthem repeatedly. Much longer than the other volumes, almost twice aslong as Kenneth Muir’s King Lear in the same series, it is intended forinformed readers familiar with the history of Hamlet criticism and itpursues the topics that particularly interested the editor. Hence 150 pagesof Longer Notes, an innovation in the Arden Shakespeare, marvels ofcompression and clarity. Hence, too, more than sixty pages on the texts,another ten on Der Bestrafte Brudermord, and a Critical Introductionthat solves many disputed problems and (for reasons of space?) ignoresothers. Harold concentrates on plot problems (delay, the central act,revenge, the final act), and has less to say about atmosphere, imagery,stage history, and the like. Challenging T. S. Eliot and others who dismissthe play as an ‘artistic failure’, Harold stresses its ‘coherent dramaticdesign’ (p. 127), Shakespeare’s ‘assured grasp [of] the many threads of hiscomplicated plot’ (p. 135), and gives less emphasis to the play’s ‘unrivalledimaginative power’ (p. 123) and ‘infinite suggestiveness’ (p. 128). All thathe says about the dramatic design is illuminating and I would not wantone word unsaid: still, I wish that he could have found space to standback from the play, as when he decides that ‘what Hamlet shrinks from isnot the act of vengeance but the whole burden of living’ (p. 147).

The length of the textual introduction may have stunned some readers(compare the sixty pages in Hamlet with the five pages in Kenneth Muir’sKing Lear), though not all. At St Paul’s School one set of sixth-formers


16 The Shakespeare Newsletter (Winter, 1991), 48.


was fired by Harold’s ‘obvious fervour for the subject’ and ‘we were drawninto increasingly detailed debates about the text of Hamlet’. Tim Jotischkywrote to the editor about a textual crux (II. i. 65) and received back acharacteristic 5-page reply (7 Nov. 1984) in which Harold defended hiseditorial thinking and ended ‘I hope I have acquitted myself adequately. . . I am very glad that you and your set have in general found my editionhelpful.’

Harold’s sixty pages on text are modest compared with Dover Wilson’stwo volumes and, if they unbalance the Introduction, are what they areby deliberate choice. Harold believed ‘that editing was the most valuableof all scholarly activities, for the edition of a text will stand for futureages long after the fogs of critical and uncritical opinion have dispersed’(18 June 1993). Or, on a more public occasion, ‘the most importantShakespeare research in our century, to my mind, is that which has beendevoted to his text’.17

One cannot deny that Harold had decided views. Yet his thinkingabout the text of Hamlet wobbled interestingly over a period of manyyears. Just one year before he signed his contract, in 1953, Alice Walkerhad published Textual Problems of the First Folio, where she examined sixFolio plays and their ‘copy’. It had been accepted for some time that theseFolio texts were somehow related to both one or more Quarto texts andto a lost manuscript. Alice Walker argued that the F texts were printedfrom corrected Quarto copy—that is, from a printed text into which ascribe or editor had written words and lines from a manuscript. Thishypothesis, with its far-reaching implications, could not be ignored by theeditor of Hamlet. As soon as he signed his contract Harold grappled withit, and concluded that

Dr. Walker’s expert scrutiny of the two texts [Second Quarto and Folio Hamlet]has revealed, as we have seen, a number of resemblances between them. Andwhen due allowance has been made for those which need not have the signifi-cance which she attaches to them, enough remain to make it probable that, inthe preparation of F, some use was made of Q2 . . . But Dr. Walker’s theory thatthe actual copy for the Folio Hamlet was a corrected Second Quarto mustclearly be rejected.18

Greg endorsed this conclusion.

Harold Jenkins, while recognizing the influence of Q2 on F, advances strongreasons for supposing that it cannot have served as copy. Indeed, the absence of

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17 Address to the Honours Convocation of Iona College, 16 Oct. 1983.18 ‘The Relation Between the Second Quarto and the Folio Text of Hamlet’ Studies in Biblio-graphy, 7 (1955), 69–83.


any general typographical resemblance between the Q and F texts is a difficultyin the way of Miss Walker’s thoroughgoing theories in the case of other playsbesides Hamlet.19

Nevertheless when the edition of Hamlet appeared in 1982, Haroldhad changed his mind.

Although F relies upon an independent manuscript, it cannot have been printeddirectly and simply from it. What is often supposed and what I now accept asprobable, is that it depends, though not necessarily directly, upon a copy of Q2which had been collated with the manuscript and emended to conform with it.(p. 68)

He explained that ‘the shift in my own position since I first wrote on thesubject over twenty years ago, from the acceptance of an occasional to aconviction of a general dependence, has been determined by my increasedfamiliarity with the minutiae of the texts and my consequent awareness ofmuch more correspondence than had then been pointed out’. Yet tenyears later, when the editors of The Shakespeare Newsletter invitedHarold to initiate a new series ‘in which distinguished Shakespeareanscholars and critics reflect on their own work of a decade or so past’, heconfessed that

the complex relation between Q2 and F remains the chief unsolved problem ofthe Hamlet texts . . . The question I found most troublesome was how and howfar F actually used Q2, and my attempt to answer it still seems to me the leastsatisfactory thing in the edition.20

Most of the reviewers of Harold’s Hamlet were very respectful, likeBowers, and even enthusiastic. But times were changing: in the twenty-eight years since he had signed his contract some of the premises of theNew Bibliography were challenged, and this affected the reception of hisedition. Some of his quite basic assumptions were now treated as ‘obso-lete’—for instance, his belief in conflated texts and in ‘good’ and ‘bad’quartos. He described to me (11 Oct. 1992) his ‘despair at finding that theachievements of scholarship should be denigrated by the likes of [a NorthAmerican critic] . . . I do not think the fact of memorially constructedtexts is a matter of opinion, least of all his’, and added (19 Oct. 1992)‘Fashion has turned against Greg & bibliography, and people seem moreconcerned to be . . . on the bandwagon than to seek and hold on to truth. . . I am old-fashioned enough to believe that one opinion is not as good


19 W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio (Oxford, 1955), 333.20 The Shakespeare Newsletter (Winter, 1991), 47.


as another.’ In 1988 he was outraged that a belated review of his Hamlet‘praised it with superlatives and proceeded to decline acceptance ofalmost everything it said’ (5 Sept.). In the later 1980s and 1990s he felt‘marginalised’ (21 Jan. 1994). ‘Can you wonder . . . that I am disillusionedand despairing of modern developments in Shakespeare scholarship?’(16 March 1996). His despondency was not helped by the thought that heought to defend the New Bibliography and himself when attacked—instead of which he knew that he was snatching at excuses ‘to cover whatis really indolence and cowardice, I fear—the accidie of old age’ (21 Jan.1994); ‘I hate the thought of involving myself in controversies overHamlet’ (7 Oct. 1993). Although his mind was as sharp as ever, I think heworried that truth might suffer from the weakness of its champion’sdeclining years.

To some extent all scholars who live to the age of ninety have to acceptthat they may be thought obsolete. Admired as he was by many loyalfriends, Harold felt his growing isolation keenly. Yet at the same time hereceived some of the usual and some unusual honours, especially after thepublication of his Hamlet. Before 1982 he had been a Visiting Professorat Duke University (1957–8) and Oslo University (1974), a member of theCouncil of the Malone Society (1955–89; President, 1989–2000) and ofthe Editorial Board of Shakespeare Survey (1964–72). After 1982 hebecame an honorary D.Litt. of Iona College, La Rochelle, NY (1983). Hewas the first Shakespeare specialist to receive the Shakespeare Prize of theFVS Foundation, Hamburg (Stiftung FVS zu Hamburg), in recognitionof his work as general editor of the Arden Shakespeare and as editor ofthe Arden Hamlet, in 1986. This prize, awarded annually for outstandingcontributions to European culture, was first won by Vaughan Williams(1937), and later by Graham Greene, Harold Pinter, Janet Baker, PaulScofield, Peter Brook, Graham Sutherland, Philip Larkin, Tom Stoppard,David Hockney, Doris Lessing, Alec Guinness, etc., a list that almost any-one would be proud to join, as was Harold. I was present at a dinner givenby the West German ambassador in London, where Harold said, in replyto the ambassador, ‘If I may repeat just one thing that I said in Hamburg,it would be this. I was able to accept the prize with a little less sense ofinadequacy in so far as I could regard it as given to me as one smallrepresentative of a great tradition of Shakespearian scholarship’—but ofcourse we all knew that it had gone to the best man in his own right, notjust to a representative. A festschrift appeared in 1987, “Fanned andWinnowed Opinions” Shakespearean essays presented to Harold Jenkins,ed. John W. Mahon and Thomas A. Pendleton, under the imprint of

HAROLD JENKINS 567


Methuen the then publisher of the Arden Shakespeare (1987: the titlerefers to Harold’s reading of Hamlet V. ii. 189). He became a SeniorFellow of this Academy in 1989, a Fellow of UCL in 1992, and a Fellowof the Royal Society of Literature in 1999.

Harold met his future wife, Gladys Puddifoot (born 1 July 1908) whenthey were undergraduates in London and they married in South Africa in1939. Gladys, a history graduate (BA, King’s College, London, 1930),later presented a thesis on ‘Methods of influencing Public Opinion,1593–1603’ (MA Cum Laude, Witwatersrand, 1941), and publishedvarious articles, including ‘Ways and Means in Elizabethan Propaganda’(propaganda, she explained, was not a new weapon, ‘as if no one had everheard of it until Dr. Goebbels discovered it hiding in a beer-cellar’).21 Shetaught History and English in South Africa, and also taught in a ‘nativeschool’ some evenings. ‘How I hate this country with its endless cruelty’she wrote in her diary (20 July 1943): yet she also loved (and painted) thelandscapes, enjoyed tennis with Harold, and they led an active social life.In later years she devoted one day a week to study and research, withHarold’s full support; I think she was his equal in many ways and theperfect partner for him—a charming and gentle person, yet with a mindof her own. She died in 1984 in a tragic road accident, a blow from whichhe never really recovered. Fortunately she lived long enough to read histribute to her in the Preface to Hamlet. ‘In daily conversation I have hadavailable to me her intimate and wide-ranging knowledge of thingsElizabethan and her wise, and sometimes sceptical, comments.’ One obit-uarist, Elizabeth Brennan, rightly said that the marriage was at the centreof Harold’s life. There were no children.

In his later years failing sight and hearing greatly restricted Harold’sactivities. He continued to go frequently to the theatre—he never lost hislove of the theatre—and to lectures and meetings, even though he some-times could not hear or see. He also suffered from a tremor in his hands(‘my affliction’ he called it), which made eating and drinking difficult: ifhe dropped a cup or a knife, always to his consternation, it was touchingto observe how lovingly Gladys protected him. A stroke in September 1999hastened the deterioration of his general health. In November he movedto a home in Ashtead, Surrey, where he died in his sleep on 4 January2000. A memorial gathering followed on 26 July at the British Academy.


21 History, 26 (1941–2), 105–14. See also her article, ‘The Archpriest Controversy and the Printers,1601–1603’ in The Library, Fifth Series, 2 (1948), 180–6; and ‘Thomas Winter’s Confession’, byGladys and Harold Jenkins (The Month, N.S., 7 (1952), 83–8 and 290–5).


Elizabeth Brennan welcomed Harold’s friends, Randolph Quirk (theLord Quirk) a former student and colleague at UCL, gave the address,and other speakers included John Mahon and the present writer; MichaelPennington, a famous Hamlet, with Barbara Hardy, Nicola Bennett andPiers Plowright, read passages from the Arden text of the play, andSandra Clark read some of Harold’s Commentary notes.

* * *

What more can we say about his character and style? A student of his inSouth Africa (Ruth Nevo) reports that ‘he would appear in the classroom,tall, fair, handsome, impeccably dressed, a touch dandified perhaps forthe provincial tastes of those days but providing, with his, we felt, quitelibertine choice of neckties matter in which his audience took the keenestinterest. And he would launch into a lecture as faultlessly constructed andas gracefully articulated as was his appearance . . . I was convinced! Andbewitched. And have remained so ever since.’ At much the same timeGladys wrote in her diary (11 Nov. 1944) that a lady said to her ‘There’syour husband coming along with one of his gay ties’ and Gladys noted‘Apparently he has rather a reputation for his vanity.’ (I suspect that someof her diary entries were meant to be read by him.) A former student (PohSim Plowright) described Harold as ‘very courteous, very elegant andslightly daunting’ in 1963, and I would think that he made a similar firstimpression on many.

Younger colleagues often found Harold enormously encouraging andhelpful. When one at Westfield moved house, Gladys and Harold, immac-ulate in his denim suit, turned up to lift and carry. Yet he did not hesitateto express his feelings when he disapproved—for example, when juniorcolleagues disappeared for several days each week. And he spoke out aswell when others roused his anger or impatience, particularly doctors andpoliticians. ‘When I replied to the doctor’s enquiry about how I was by say-ing I was old and feeble, she responded by saying it was delightful to see melooking so well. This of course is meant to cheer one up . . . Doctors arehumbugs when they can’t take refuge in an easy remedy’ (24 July 1996). Hesaw Kenneth Baker and Cecil Parkinson on television and disliked ‘theextraordinary complacency and self-satisfaction of the politicians . . . Who,anyway, wants to see Parkinson sitting in his shirt-sleeves in the garden?. . . for its larger purpose of presenting oneself on television to a million ormore viewers, it seems to me contemptible. Why must these people whohold forth on television insult us in this way?’ (7 Oct. 1993).

HAROLD JENKINS 569


Yet when one had got to know him one realised that, at heart, he hada gentle, sensitive nature, as well as charm and wit, closely related asthese were to his verbal mastery. A letter from Harold—not infrequentlyI received one a week—was an occasion for rejoicing. The pithy style ofhis commentary on Hamlet also remains a joy, even ‘his rather sharptongue’, because the style is the man and expresses perfectly what hewanted to say. ‘Mercifully the difficulty of the problem is in excess of itsimportance’ (p. 112); ‘Hamlet is not exhorting them to give a straightanswer; he is assuming they won’t’ (on II. ii. 278). He combined sensi-tivity with Johnsonian wisdom. The same was true of his conversationand his letters: he could sparkle or fume or commiserate, he was alwaysequal to the occasion. ‘I should like to experience the joys of verticalliving again before the terminal horizontality’ (from hospital, 24 April1994); ‘I have concluded a very outspoken correspondence with theBarnet Social Services Manager, who notably avoided my invitation tocome and see me’ (27 July 1994); ‘[very soon] I shall be 86, and no doubtcarrying an increased number of aches and pains. But at least I am stillcarrying them and not they me’ (9 July 1995); ‘though we must alwaysremember that Hamlet is a stage play, we must also remember, as thepresent generation doesn’t want to, that Hamlet is much more than astage play’ (7 May 1995). Harold will be admired by future generationsfor his scholarship, his felicitous command of language, his wit, and hisrobust good sense.

* * *

The late Kathleen Tillotson, a colleague and also the wife of GeoffreyTillotson, told me that in his adult years Harold changed very little.The Tillotsons and Jenkinses were good friends for decades: whenGeoffrey Tillotson died, in 1969, Mrs Tillotson was invited to Edinburghfor long weekends, and went twice. I am indebted to her for two revealinganecdotes about Harold and Sisson. (a) Sisson asked Harold to give acourse of lectures on ‘The History of the English Language’. Harolddemurred, saying that there were others who were better qualified to givesuch a course. Sisson looked at him reproachfully and said ‘They’d kill it!’(A folder containing Harold’s course on ‘The History of the English Lan-guage’ survives among his papers). (b) At a dinner to mark Sisson’s retire-ment, in 1951, Sisson made a speech in which he touched briefly on eachof his collected colleagues. In passing he referred to ‘Harold Jenkins andhis dreadful honesty,’ which provoked spontaneous applause—no doubt



an allusion to Harold’s uninhibited directness, his ‘rather sharp tongue.’(c) I can add a third anecdote, as Harold himself told it to me. He hadgone into Sidgwick and Jackson’s and overheard the editor of the Reviewof English Studies say to a colleague ‘Another book by the evergreen F. S.Boas! Now who do you think we can persuade to review it? Ah, Jenkins,would you like to review this new book by F. S. Boas?’ It sounded as ifthey were scraping the bottom of the barrel, so Harold said crossly ‘No,I wouldn’t.’ Later that day Sisson (the editor of MLR) offered Harold thesame book to review. Harold said ‘I’ve already been asked.’ Sisson wassurprised, as the book had only just arrived on his desk, and said ‘O——who are you reviewing it for?’

* * *

There are many delightful stories about Harold and his students. Here aretwo, contributed by Elizabeth MacGowan (Mrs Kenneth Palmer). (a) ‘AsI entered for my tutorial, I encountered a pink-faced young man makinghis exit. Harold looked slightly pained. “Do you know?” he said, “—thatyoung man finds the Old English Riddles funny.” “So do I!” I said. A longpause followed. “O . . . Do you?” A further pause. The tutorial began, butI fear that I had lost much ground in his estimation.’ (b ) ‘It was the lasttutorial before Finals, and it lasted for 1 hr. 40 mins. without let-up orintermission. At the end I rose to my feet, said “Thank you very much,Dr. Jenkins”—and walked briskly and firmly into the closed door of hisoffice. The inevitable recoil landed me on the floor. Harold was appalled.He darted over, assisted me to my feet and, quite literally, dusted medown, murmuring “My dear Miss MacGowan—are you all right? I’m sosorry, dear me, I had no idea . . .” and so on. It was the only occasion Ican remember when he was at a loss.’

* * *

In his will Harold left his books to Queen Mary and Westfield College. Heasked his executors to ‘seek and follow’my advice ‘in any matters relating tomy literary interests and copyrights concerning my papers and books’. Withthe agreement of his executors and of his niece (Mrs Catherine Warnock) Idecided that Harold’s literary papers should also go to Queen Mary andWestfield College—that is, his many drafts of lectures, articles, and books,both published and unpublished. Some of his best uncollected essays havenow been issued in one volume by the Arden Shakespeare (Thomson Learning): Structural Problems in Shakespeare by Harold Jenkins, 2001.

HAROLD JENKINS 571


Many of Harold’s and Gladys’s more personal papers remain withMrs Warnock. They include several diaries. Harold’s are quite short,covering (a) July 1934 (33 pages), and (b) January 1937 (11 pages): (a)deals chiefly with a camping holiday with a friend, (b) with his return toSouth Africa. There are some characteristic touches, e.g. on playing tennis:‘I wish one needn’t feel it a personal affront to serve double-faults whenplaying in partnership with him.’ Gladys’s diaries are much more detailed;three survive, for the years 1942, 1943, 1944. From these we learn thatHarold was keen on surfing, she on painting; that Harold was unhappy tobe unable to contribute to the war-effort (23 Aug. 1942); that Gladys seemsalways to have gone to church on her own. Gladys’s diaries give the impres-sion of a very happy marriage of equals, confirmed by many later friends.22

E. A. J. HONIGMANNFellow of the Academy

Note. Obituaries appeared in the Guardian (14 Jan. 2000, Sandra Clark); the DailyTelegraph (17 Jan. 2000); the Independent (19 Jan. 2000, Elizabeth M. Brennan); TheTimes (31 Jan. 2000); and the Scotsman (4 Feb. 2000, Alasdair Steven). In theShakespeare Newsletter, 243 (Winter 1999/2000) many friends and colleaguescontributed ‘Reflections on Harold Jenkins’ (pp. 93–107).

There is a List of Publications in ‘Fanned and Winnowed Opinions’ (see p. 567,above), to the year 1987, and I know of only four later publications prior to Harold’sdeath: the letter to TLS (above, p. 562), the two issues of Shakespeare Newsletter,1991 and 1997 (above, pp. 564 n. 16, 560 n. 12), and ‘“To be, or not to be”: Hamlet’sDilemma’ (Hamlet Studies, 13 (1991), 8–24).

The letters from which I quote, if not otherwise attributed, were written to me.Mrs Warnock and her mother, Mrs Barbara Jenkins (Harold’s sister-in-law) andMrs Bess Plested (his cousin) gave me invaluable help and advice concerning the earlyhistory of the Jenkins family, and Harold’s childhood and marriage. I am also greatlyindebted to the following colleagues and friends: Dr Elizabeth Brennan (Mrs EricLowden); Mr Martin Butcher; Mr Basil Greenslade; Professor Barbara Hardy;Professor John Mahon; Professor Ruth Nevo; Mr and Mrs Kenneth Palmer; Mr andMrs Piers Plowright (Dr Poh Sim Plowright); Professor Richard Proudfoot; ProfessorRandolph Quirk (the Lord Quirk); Mr and Mrs Graham Rumney; Miss RosemaryAnne Sisson; Professor Marvin Spevack; Professor Kathleen Tillotson; ProfessorGeorge Walton Williams.


22 Many of Harold’s friends and colleagues were Fellows of the Academy, and I have consultedtheir Memoirs. For Fellows mentioned above, the Memoirs can be located as follows: PeterAlexander, PBA 66, 1980; John Butt, 52, 1966; R. W. Chambers, 30, 1944; W. W. Greg, 45, 1959;R. B. McKerrow, 26, 1940; Kenneth Muir, 97, 1997; A. W. Pollard, 31, 1945; Geoffrey Tillotson,56, 1970; F. P. Wilson, 49, 1963; J. Dover Wilson, 59, 1973. An obituary notice for C. J. Sissonwas published in Modern Language Review, 62 (1967), 382–4.


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